Unsettling the Settler Within

A couple of years ago, I wrote a series of columns regarding the history, customs, and beliefs of Aboriginal peoples in Canada. Since that time, I have continued to educate myself about my role as a naturalized Canadian citizen towards the people who have lived on this land since time immemorial. While I freely admit to being an immigrant, moving from America in the late 1990s, Inever saw myself as a “settler” until reading “Unsettling the Settler Within” by Paulette Regan.

Regan, the Director of Research for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, emphasizes that Canadians play up our image of being hard-working, benevolent, friendly, well-meaning, and welcoming while down playing not only our historical mistreatment of Aboriginal peoples but also present day issues such as racism, exploitation, poverty, low educational achievement rates, systemic violence and abysmal living conditions endured by many First Nations, Inuit, and Métis peoples.

Although Canada no longer operates as a colony under England or France, from an Indigenous person’s point of view the invaders never left and coloniality is in full force. Readers with ties to countries who suffered through wars of decolonization may feel that the Canadian situation is “kinder and gentler” than what they experienced, but does discounting another person’s pain because it is less intense than your own help the healing for either party? Do we even know the true extent of the Aboriginal experience?

Anyone who has been forcefully displaced knows the pain of losing one’s home and land. We Canadians directly benefit from the biggest land grab in history. Aboriginal people went from owning 100% of the land to owning less than 0.2%; with settlers commandeered the other 99.8% for ourselves. Living here, on the traditional lands of others, doesn’t make us “bad” people, especially as most of us work very hard to afford to live in our homes and raise our families. It does make us complicit, accountable, and part of the “settler problem.”

Regan asks us to “live in truth” by “facing the full moral consequences of the unjust legacy we have inherited as beneficiaries of colonialism” and to “challenge ourselves and others to think and feel and act with fierce courage and humble tenacity in the struggle to right our relationship” with Indigenous peoples. She quotes Lebaron in describing the importance of listening to understand the other person’s perspective: “The first step in truly listening is silence, not just refraining from speaking but “being silence.”

Being silence is not an action or inaction; it is a state that engages our bodies, minds, feelings, and spirits. When we are being silence, we are concentrating, still and calm. Our thoughts are silent. Our attention is in the present…When we are willing to enter a space of listening…we will hear, know, and sense things both spoken and unspoken. …We don’t know how this happens, but we know that it does happen. It is as though the stories that are shared are doorways into many other stores. …

Once we enter that world with another this can lead to many things. One of them is change.”

We have to begin from where we are—right in the middle of a big tangled knot of arrogance, dismissiveness, mismanagement, broken promises, inhumane treatment, and physical and cultural genocide. Tugging harder at a knot doesn’t loosen it. Knots are not untangled by command, nor by step-by-step improvement plans. Feeling sorry about the knot doesn’t untie it. Thinking good thoughts about the knot doesn’t help. Leaving it alone to sort itself out is a ridiculous approach. Untangling a knot means taking responsibility and not giving up because it is too difficult. It requires a willingness to examine the snarl from a variety of angles to find the places where there is a bit of give—the loose spots where the tension is slightly eased. Untangling a knot takes gentle hands willing to work at one spot after another, letting the string show you what area to work on next.

All non-Indigenous Canadians, whether we arrived a few weeks ago or have families that have lived here for many generations, benefit from a multitude of blessings that are part of our national inheritance. As Paulette Regan clearly explains, we have also inherited a tangled snarl in terms of our relationship with Indigenous peoples. What can you do to ease the tensions and smooth the way so that future generations don’t have an even bigger knot to tackle?